Boxes
by RebbieChan
Summary: Mulder is excited about finding a possible lead. Post series, pre IWTB.


Mulder looked up from his computer screen hearing tire wheels crunch over the driveway. He slid his chair over to the window and peered out. Scully pulled up and got out of the car, tossing an empty McDonald's bag into the trash before coming in. It was late, passed nine. She had called to let him know she would be back late from the hospital late, but he had still been nervously checking the window and the clock every fifteen minutes or so for the last two hours.

He grabbed his notebook, printouts and extra pages pressed inside or sticking out at odd angles. He flipped through and pulled out a scanned newspaper clipping. After researching and coming up with next to nothing, he finally found something worth looking into. A sign that they really were coming.

He could hear her moving around below him and up the stairs down the hall. After a moment Scully opened the door to his office. "Sorry I'm back so late," she said absently, already moving to head towards the bedroom.

"I don't mind." Mulder looked up over his shoulder. He glanced back to his findings and took them in his hands. "Scully you have to take a look at this."

Scully stopped. "Mulder, can't it wait, I was going to go right to bed."

"It would just take a second. I think I have some evidence that the invasion will be happening."

"Mulder not now, please."

He frowned, clipping in hand, stopping himself from handing it over to her. He felt it drop into his lap. "Scully, this is important." Her head bowed slightly, trying to calculate the best way to get out of this conversation and get what she wanted out of it. He knew the look too well these days. His frown deepened. "You know what? Fine." He pressed his lips together and shoved the page back into his workbook. "Ignore the reason we're out here."

"That's not fair and you know it."

Mulder shrugged. "There hasn't been any progress in over a year."

She stared at him blankly for a moment. An exhausted smile came to her lips and she shook her head. "What do you do all day then, Mulder? Do you have any idea how much work I do every day?"

"I do, this is one little thing," he protested but she was turning away.

"I'm going to sleep." She said as she shut the door behind her.

She was doing what she always had. A forced long term memory loss. All those times she stood beside him and knowing after a few days or weeks that there had to be a conspiracy or that maybe his theories weren't so strange. Then, after a few months of silence, the syndicate would grow active again or something would come up and she would be back to no it isn't aliens Mulder. As if in the time away from it she had forgotten all she said, saw and thought. Scully was frustrating like that, shutting down and blocking out the things that made her uncomfortable rather than dealing with them.

Scully didn't want to hear his plans and certainly not his progress.

Mulder watched the light underneath the doorway go out. He considered joining her in the bedroom, laying down next to her, say he was sorry and how was your day? That would be giving in. It was what she wanted but they both knew he was too stubborn for it.

He ripped out a blank page from the notebook, crumpled it and tossed it to the trash can. He missed, cursed, and turned back to his desk.

Of course he would be excited to tell her whatever he found, who else could he talk to about it. Talk to at all for that matter. He tapped his knuckles against his lips.

She was too absorbed in trying to wrap this into that ideal life, that American Dream she always seemed to be after. She'd live for the strange with him but put it in some separate little box she pretended she didn't have. All to feel the normalcy she continually rejected or turned away from. From choosing science when it was still more seen as a boys club, to choosing the FBI when she had already become a doctor, or even sticking with him when all arrows pointed to run the other way.

Scully did not forget the reason she left with him, went into hiding and started this life with him. She had packed it away somewhere under the floorboards of the house.

—

He had done it again. How was it that Mulder could get so obsessed with things? He'd get into something and suddenly it was all that he could see. He'd say he sees her, but too many times she was sideline for whatever he decided to chase.

Scully turned on her side and pulled the covers up to her shoulders. It wasn't that she didn't know what could be coming in a few years. It felt futile. She needed her sleep. They both knew what would happen if she looked at whatever it was he found. She would be up with him all night looking over it, researching, planning. Even if she would have the chance to get sleep that old fear and paranoia that edged the back of her mind would emerge to the forefront once more, taking over her thoughts and her dreams.

If they were to survive in the meantime, they needed money. One of them had to work and she was able to get a high paying job as a doctor, but having this job meant she was exhausted. She didn't have the energy day in and day out to work with Mulder on this.

It wasn't just a means to an end. She couldn't spend many weeknights and weekends devoted to aliens or whatever, do a half assed job at work and collect her pay. It was people's lives, albeit at a smaller scale than what Mulder spent all day trying to work towards. Lives nonetheless. He didn't see that, and when he did it was with a diluted vision that blurred everything but the task he set before himself.

Scully huffed and turned over on her back, staring at the ceiling. She couldn't sleep like this.

It was as if he only saw it as something to do, while she saw it as terrifying and impending. Even with their connections, ones they were too afraid to contact, many sane people would not believe.

She wanted to cross the hallway and tell him she would look at it on Saturday when she would have the time. If she did, would he understand why she was upset?

There was a point when they would have talked about it, talked through it. Through years and isolation from family and friends that part of them weathered away. It wasn't gone completely but the sparks that seemed to promise flames were nothing more than ashes and embers.

Now, they were just two people in two separate small rooms, forgetting walls had doors.

* * *

**A/N:  
**I posted this up on my tumblr first - which is what I've pretty much been doing with fan fiction lately. I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote this in a notebook a few weeks ago.


End file.
